“The Mouse, The White Noise and the Two Year Old: Three Micro Essays”
“The Mouse, The White Noise and the Two Year Old: Three Micro Essays”
(published in Lewis University’s Windows Magazine 2023 - First Place)
“The Mouse”: YouTube videos about “how to do Disney” usually include everyday citizens in their beige non messy bedrooms with topics like, “What to pack for a 12 month old, a 29 month old, a 468 month old.” The videos from inside the parks look like handheld war movie footage. Super shaky and jerky, way too many popsicle casualties, and too much cave footage into bright light, back into caves. The problem with youtube is that it’s like a drug for people (me) who want to be in control of unpredictable flagship life experiences. I’m here to say that last summer I entered a Disney theme park with my two and four year olds after watching as many of the trip planning hints on youtube as possible and none of them helped me. NONE. Those Youtube channel Disney moms had let me down so hard I felt obligated to provide real talk to anyone who would listen in the attempt to save a life or two. Literally. TIPS:
–Accept as much as possible that you will NOT have a magical time. You MIGHT have magical moments, but not a magical TIME.
–You have to LEARN AN APP to attend this theme park. An APP. That you’ll NEVER USE AGAIN but need to know and operate under extreme duress. Learn it. Fast.
–Don’t just take water. Take water in many forms (liquid, ice, but not mist) and in many containers. In fact, bring a camel. We took a spray bottle thinking that would help with the heat and it backfired when my kids sprayed everyone’s calves in line. Fail.
–Bring money. Bring lots of money. Don’t pack 18 snacks and outfits for any type of “situation” like the other vlogs say. Cuz I did that. And it sucked. Just bring lots of money and buy your way out of problems. You’re already spending a fortune, so spend a little more money indulging your child’s every food and toy demand.
–When Goofy needs to go “on break,” don’t appeal to his handler saying, “my kid is really having a tough time, could you please just see one more?” Because that handler will look at you like lowly tourist parent scum. Now, not only is your kid upset, but you also take a ride on the guilt train. That train is one of the unspoken little secrets of the park. Don’t worry about finding it. It will find you.
–When your kids finally come out of their cranky funk and begin dancing to the main street music, don’t look at other parents and then back at your cute kids as if they’re going to affirm how darling yours are. They got their calves sprayed by your kids. In a line they could not leave.
–I would like to offer any prospective parent a way out. Here is my proposal.
Like the Genie + package, there should be a Parent + package (with pre- visit day bootcamp) which would include tips from above and also:
–how to apologize in multiple languages
–lowering expectations with phrases like, “it’s gonna suck and that’s okay”
–how to carry a bag of tootsie pops on your person without it showing
–how to underhand AND overhand throw money at the problems
–how to care for water camel in crowds
To conclude, if anyone would like to crowd fund this idea, let me know.
“The White Noise Machine”: I hear voices in the white noise machine. I have to play it at full volume due to the baby who sleeps a few feet away from me and likes to repeatedly scratch the side of her pack ‘n play in the middle of the night. I keep telling her it’s creepy. She keeps telling me nothing. Because she’s a baby. Sometimes the white noise machine makes jokes. They come from this “ghost comic lady” voice. I was a little offended until I realized I could steal her stuff since “ghost comic lady” probably doesn’t have a blog, or is real.
She says stuff like, “Annie, there should be a word for guilt free cake.”
I think, “There is. Muffin.”
“Dang it,” she whispers, “I wish I had thought of that…”
Then she asks the exact same questions I’ve been wondering about!
“Why do old people always have ‘a bag for that’? And is there a word for seeing my toes too much in the summer? Why do we have linen closets but never say ‘can you throw that linen over me, I’m a little cold?’ Do people realize that eating an oatmeal raisin cookie means that someone has put not one, but multiple deceased grapes in there? Is there a word for the specific type of guilt felt when you use your host’s toothpaste and dig around in the cabinet for it. I mean REALLY dig around in there for it?”
“Great questions! You read my mind!” I tell her. We’ve kind of become each other’s muses, “ghost comic lady” and me. There are other voices in there too. Voices that defy the title of this machine. I’ve been thinking a lot as I read Ibram X. Kendi’s books Stamped and How to Be An Anti Racist. Why do we call it a white noise machine? Maybe because white (people) noise in an echo chamber of only white (people) noise, pacifies and causes us to hear less of what’s true? White noise has been “shhing” people to sleep - away from the fight to end systemic and institutional racism. So what does it take to turn it off? How did people like John Brown, Lucretia Mott, and the Grimke sisters rise out of the pacifying white noise of pro slavery to fight against it? Maybe the question is not, what does it take to turn it off, but what does it take to turn up the volume of Black voices so white people can hear. There are easy ways, like tapping on a podcast by Austin Channing Brown. There are harder ways like acknowledging the unnoticed systemic white noise I have lived in that keeps racist systems alive. And then actively resisting these systems to change the white noise into an active music that pierces through the “shhhing” of complacent systems that oppress Black and Latinx people. … “Ghost comic lady” has been taking this internal discussion to heart lately. I know she’ll find a way to work it into her biting social commentary stand up routine. When you’re still up four times a night with a young child and quarantined, the white noise machine likes to speak.
“Bad At Everything: An Overview & List”: Two year olds are really bad at everything. It’s strange because as a tiny baby, my daughter was really GOOD at everything (except sleep). She was good at: not pooping and handing her diaper to me like a delicate bird was inside, not hiding under furniture, not unrolling paper towels, not holding her finger one inch from her brother’s favorite car while he screamed, not whining when distant family who wanted non confrontational facetime with our kids called during covid. Fast forward two years. Now, it’s as if the “2’s” leprechaun has possessed this formerly sweet blob. Re leprechaun - I wanted some comparison that wasn’t as dark as a demon but maybe on its way to becoming one. I don’t remember the leprechaun possessing my son in this way, probably because it was staved off with undivided parental attention and zero competition for toys. The leprechaun has reprogrammed my 2 year old’s brain. Example:
2 year old: “Oh, oh, oh! MY GRANOLA BAR - BROKEN!!”
This is said with devastation like Tom Hanks in Saving Private Ryan. I wonder what would happen if the sorrow of these toddler memories stayed into adulthood:
–Joe: I’m so sorry about your mom.
–Liz: Yeah. Thanks. This is so hard.
–Joe: I get it. This level of pain reminds me of the time my granola bar broke.
1) BAD AT (or maybe really good at?) REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY: Saying things like “Oh, you’re not able to do that, are you? Probably not!” with a twinkle in the eye normally gets kids to say, “yes I can!”
But I tried this with my 2 year old and she says, “I can’t. You right!” and shrugs.
2) BAD AT BOUNDARIES: In middle school I had a lot of “cast” fantasies. If I lightly suffer a bone break in my arm or even better, my leg (crutches!), everyone would give me a lot of attention and sign my cast. I feel like time played a trick on me and gave me this attention many years later at terrible times and in the wrong context. Like, 5:30am while I’m trying to pee and the 2 year old wants to sit on my lap while I go.
3) BAD AT HEALING FAKE WOUNDS: We’re in a code red band aid situation. We are putting bandaids on imaginary scratches. She will keep the thing on for so long, the edges pick up a pound of lint and sometimes a whole cracker.
4) BAD AT BEING DRY: As with everything these days, the two year old MUST do things herself. That means trying to towel off after a bath. Getting long sleeve PJs on the semi wet skin of a two year old is something that can cause you to quit parenting. For good. … I have a 4 year old so I know it gets a little better. In the meantime, I have some linty bandages to coax off.